Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, once compared the US and the Soviet Union to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life”. This week’s US-China summit in Beijing  underscored  that what was true during the Cold War remains the case today – but that the two contemporary superpowers’ stings are increasingly tipped with  economic , as well as literal, plutonium. JOIN US ON TELEGRAM Follow our coverage of the war on the @